Monday, February 04, 2008

A new logo?

The BBC wants a "happy new image" for its TV licence fee says The Sunday Telegraph, something which fellow blogger Tony Sharp suggests might be a tad expensive.

We at EU Referendum, therefore, have come to the rescue with a new logo for the BBC. Happy it may not be but, given where the BBC's loyalties really lie, at least it is honest.

Honesty is very much an issue with the BBC and it is as well to remind ourselves that it is not always what the BBC does say, but what it does not.

For example, last Friday, there was an animated discussion by the panel on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, on whether Home Information Packs (HIPs) were a good thing. Closet Europhiliac David Dimbleby let the panel members chunter on for quite a while but neither he nor any of the speakers mentioned the EU origins of this mad scheme.

More importantly, for the first time for a long time, BBC television news yesterday carried a longish item about the deteriorating situation in Chad. Yet, despite the ignominious role of the EU’s humanitarian force, there was no mention at all of the EU in the bulletins.

A brief reference, however, did creep into the BBC website. There, a spokesman for the rebels in Chad was cited, saying the rebels had taken the eastern town of Adre, near the border with Sudan, "an area where some 400,000 people displaced as a result of the conflict in Darfur are living in camps."

Adre, the BBC explains, "is in the area where a French-dominated EU peacekeeping force is due to deploy to protect displaced civilians and the aid workers supporting them. Chadian officials have accused the rebels of seeking to stop the deployment of the EU force."

Now, given that the "force" was supposed to have deployed in November, and was already on its way last week, with detachments turning back in mid-air, when news of the fighting came though, this does not seem to be an accurate representation of the state of play. But, to be accurate, the BBC would also have to be critical of the EU – and that, on such an important issue, it could never be.

Thus it is that the BBC should come out of its closet and declare its true colours. The new logo is not a suggestion – it is statement of fact.